Toni Basil: Word of Mouth

Toni Basil ... some trivia masters may remember her only by her "Hey, Mickey!" song and video. If you were lucky enough to catch the video, you realized that the woman could dance the planet into a frothy mess. The short video also featured an incredible blend of dance styles and influences, primarily cheer-leading movies. Guess who choreographed it? ;) Flashdancing ... before the movie by that name came out and started a craze.

So, who is Toni Basil? A choreographer whose resume reads like a history of dance in film for 20 years. Just look her up, and you'll see. The woman left her mark on the end of the 20th century, and that mark was ... a hot footprint.

I saw this music video (hired) back in the middle eighties. I thought it was excellant. Toni is a very good dancer and the music was good for the time. I'm not particularly a 'POP' fan but I enjoyed it. All these years later I got the urge to watch it again. You can't get it anywhere in the UK. Even trying to get info about Toni is very limited. Even major Music Stores have nothing at all. To be honest, this it the first Website with any detail, BUT NO CLIPS or even stills !

I still have an original recording of 'Word Of Mouth' by Toni Basil which was made during its original broadcast in 1982. Toni was way ahead of her time in adapting traditional and street dance styles into unique and vibrant choreographed pieces. 'Word of Mouth' was made at a time when, amongst others, MTV had begun to popularise the pop video by catapulting the medium into a more style and image dominated art form and this 30 minute 'video LP' is one of the crowning achievements of pop video production from the early eighties. Toni combined classical music with traditional street dance by mixing a Swan Lake extract with a street dance sequence performed by Black Dance Troupe 'The Lockers' something which had never been seen before. 'Word Of Mouth' also featured Body Bopping as a dance style two years before it became mainstream, Vogueing (Striking Poses) eight years before Madonna featured it in one of her videos and demonstrates the traditional Irish dance style that went on to become a worldwide sensation in 'Riverdance' Twelve years later. It is very easy to watch this video and forget that you are watching something that was made over 22 years ago.Outstanding!

I love Toni Basil and watched two of her short films in the eighties. Word of Mouth and Tape Two (Or Take Two) shown by the BBC and I would dearly love to get hold of them on DVD as I would like my niece to see them. But no way, they don't exist. Why is this when every piece of crap ever produced seems to be on DVD but not Toni's stuff? You can't even get the CD associated with these films only her best of CD and that hasn't got all the songs on it and certainly not the same arrangements. I know that some of the dancing would seem dated now but not all as Toni showed a lot of traditional British dancing as well as the locking and 'modern' stuff. Both films are colourful, well produced and original and I have never seen anyone cover dance and music in remotely the same way.